Mission of Honor
Mission of Honor is the twelfth book of David Weber's series of novels and short stories chronicling the adventures of Honor Harrington. It was released by Baen Books on June 22, 2010. Timeframe: December 1921 PD – May 1922 PD Cover Summary :The Star Kingdom of Manticore and the Republic of Haven have been enemies for Honor Harrington's entire life, and she has paid a price for the victories she's achieved in that conflict. And now the unstoppable juggernaut of the mighty Solarian League is on a collision course with Manticore. The millions who have already died may have been only a foretaste of the billions of casualties just over the horizon, and Honor sees it coming. :She's prepared to do anything, risk anything, to stop it, and she has a plan that may finally bring an end to the Havenite Wars and give even the Solarian League pause. But there are things not even Honor knows about. There are forces in play, hidden enemies in motion, all converging on the Star Kingdom of Manticore to crush the very life out of it, and Honor's worst nightmares fall short of the oncoming reality. :But Manticore's enemies may not have thought of everything after all. Because if everything Honor Harrington loves is going down to destruction, it won't be going alone. Plot After the destruction of the Gamma Center, Mesa launches a propaganda campaign to discredit Anton Zilwicki as a mass murderer, while the secretive Mesan Alignment Navy prepares for the execution of its long-planned Operation Oyster Bay. Meanwhile, Admiral Honor Alexander-Harrington is sent to the Haven System to once again offer peace talks to the Republic of Haven. And in the Talbott Quadrant, Michelle Henke tries to strengthen the Star Empire of Manticore's position as the coming conflict with the Solarian League looms over the horizon. Admiral Sandra Crandall arrives in the Spindle System with the Solarian League Navy's Task Force 496, demanding Michelle Henke to be turned over for what she did in the Second Battle of New Tuscany. Henke and her Tenth Fleet, however, are prepared for the Sollies and thoroughly beat them in the Battle of Spindle; dozens of ships and a total of almost 400,000 prisoners of war fall into Manticoran hands. While Honor continues the peace talks on Haven, Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore, upon receiving the news of what happened in Spindle, orders all termini of the Manticore Wormhole Junction to be shut down for Solarian commercial traffic, as the Star Empire is now in a de-facto state of war with the Solarian League. Some time later, Operation Oyster Bay finally strikes: graser torpedoes and missiles are launched against multiple targets all over the Manticore System. The space stations ''Hephaestus'', ''Vulcan'', and ''Weyland'' are destroyed, and the debris hitting the planet surfaces beneath them causes terrible damage. On Sphinx, seven and a half million humans and almost one percent of the entire treecat population are wiped out. The attack has catastrophic consequences for Manticore's economy and military strength: most of the workforce trained to build ships of war is gone, as is most of the missile-building capacity. Twelve million people have been killed, and no one even knows where the attack came from. Queen Elizabeth, however, makes it clear that she will not allow her Empire to fall before its enemies. Honor is recalled to her home system, where she learns that a large portion of the Harrington Clan was killed when the city of Yawata Crossing was hit by debris from HMSS Vulcan. Other loved ones among the casualties include Andrew and Miranda LaFollet as well as the treecat Farragut. Stricken with grief, Honor swears in the comforting arms of her husband, Hamish Alexander, that she will not rest until she has found and killed the ones responsible for what happened. However, things continue to get worse: Yeltsin's Star has also been attacked, and while the damage is limited to the outlying Blackbird Yard, High Admiral Wesley Matthews is among the casualties. Judah Yanakov is recalled to Grayson to replace him. Back on Earth, the Solarian authorities are preparing their response to the Battle of Spindle, and news of what happened to Manticore only encourages them. A force of hundreds of ships of the wall under the command of Fleet Admiral Massimo Filareta is dispatched to the Manticore System to crush the Star Empire once and for all. Meanwhile, an ammunition shortage forces the RMN to recall some of its more modern weapon systems from the Talbott Quadrant. Both Haven and Manticore learn of the Solarian attack from a high level source on Beowulf. At the Mesan Alignment Navy's secret headquarters in the Darius System, Albrecht Detweiler congratulates his officers for the successful execution of Oyster Bay, and announces that their long anticipated march to dominion over all of humanity is now at hand. With the destruction of the Manticoran space stations, one of the Alignment's most powerful enemies has been as good as neutralized. Soon, the centuries-old Mesan plan to destabilize the Solarian League and give rise to a new star nation under their control – the Renaissance Factor – will be put into action. Yet, at the same time, Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki return to Haven, and with them comes Dr. Herlander Simões, a Mesan defector who can give testimony to many of the Alignment's secretive plans. President Eloise Pritchart begins to realize that the assassination of James Webster, the death of Yves Grosclaude, the outbreak of the war, yes, possibly even the very rise to power of the Legislaturalist regime, may actually have been elaborate Mesan plots. In May of the year 1922 Post Diaspora, word of the upcoming Solarian attack on Manticore gets out. Queen Elizabeth addresses her subjects via holovid, and announces that if the League wants a war, it will get a war. A few days later Haven One arrives in the Manticore System with President Pritchart and much of her cabinet as well as Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki aboard. The long delayed first meeting between the Queen and Empress of Manticore and the President of the Republic of Haven takes place in Honor Harrington's quarters aboard her flagship. Elizabeth III learns the truth about the Mesan threat, and within hours, she and Eloise Pritchart decide to not only end the Second Havenite-Manticoran War, but to also form a military alliance against the Solarian League and whatever other enemy may come their way. Background The Shadow of Saganami and Storm from the Shadows both focus primarily on the events in and around the Talbott Cluster, while Crown of Slaves and Torch of Freedom focus on the covert war between Torch and Mesa, as well as the moral issues of genetic slavery. Mission of Honor weaves events from both of those areas together and advances the general storyline. David Weber posted a first snippet of the book in Baen's Bar on December 24, 2009. ARC release An unedited ARC version of Mission of Honor was released electronically on February 3rd, 2010. This version still includes a number of typographical and at least one rather obvious factual error: Henry Prestwick is described to have retired from the office of Chancellor of Grayson around 1920 PD; this character, however, died in the destruction of [[HMS Queen Adrienne|HMS Queen Adrienne]] in Ashes of Victory. References Characters Tyler Abercrombie | Danielle Abrioux | Dominica Adenauer | Alexandros Adriopoulos | Joanna Agnelli | William Alexander | Hamish Alexander-Harrington | Honor Alexander-Harrington | Emily Alexander-Harrington | Raoul Alexander-Harrington | Joachim Alquezar | Aldona Anisimovna | Gervais Archer | Victoria Armstrong | Joshua Atkins | Marguerite Attunga | Isabel Bardasano | Henrietta Barloi | Pépé Bautista | Andre Beaupré | Antoine Belardinelli | Anthony Berkeley | Queen Berry | Chris Billingsley | Luke Blackett | Jessup Blaine | Édouard Boisvin | Helga Boltitz | Ninon Bourchier | Evangeline Bernard | Harper Brantley | Mercedes Brigham | Ishmael Browne | Joseph Buckley | Josef Byng | Jennifer Cabeçadas | John Cabeçadas | Laura Cabeçadas | Miguel Cabeçadas | Serafina Cabeçadas | Victor Cachat | Thomas Caparelli | Frederick Carlson | Lyman Carmichael | Michael Carus | Sterling Casterlin | Hansen Chamberlain | Ambrose Chandler | Julie Chase | Darryl Chatfield | Anastasia Chernevsky | Marjorie Chin | Theresa Coleman | Jennifer Colenso | Thomas Colombo | Jerome Conner | Lucien Cortez | Chikosi Cottolengo | Sandra Crandall | Martin Culpepper | Chantelle Da Silva | Evelyn Danko | Lilian Danver | Paulo d'Arezzo | Severino Deangelo | Lewis Denton | Albrecht Detweiler | Alexis Detweiler | Collin Detweiler | Daniel Detweiler | Evelina Detweiler | Everett Detweiler | Franklin Detweiler | Gervais Detweiler | Dicey | Wilton Diego | Tabatha Dombroski | Lamprecht Doyle | Tang Dzung-ming | William Edwards | Queen Elizabeth III | Stephen Enderby | Jessica Epstein | Lavinia Fairfax | Claudio Faraday | Sebastián Fariñas | Farragut | Kyle Fernandez | Massimo Filareta | Charlotte FitzCummings | Ansten FitzGerald | Sheila Flynn | Karaamat Fonzarelli | Walter Ford | Clement Foreman | Benjamin Frankel | Javier Giscard | Patricia Givens | Stan Gregory | Berend Haarhuis | Abednego Haftner | Raymond Halstead | Alicia Hampton | Rachel Hanriot | George Hardy | Frances Harper | Spencer Hawke | Horace Harkness | Abigail Hearns | Sonja Hemphill | Michelle Henke | Vivienne Henning | Allen Higgins | Roman Hitchock | Lieselotte Hübner | Stanley Hurskainen | Efron Imbar | Edward Janacek | Andrea Jaruwalski | Baltasar Juppé | Aikawa Kagiyama | Barnabas Kew | Augustus Khumalo | Denis LePic | Ginger Lewis | Nathalie Manning | Madison Marcos | Estelle Matsuko | Vince McMahon | Catherine Montaigne | Anastasia McGillicuddy | Samson McGwire | Esther McQueen | Tony Nesbitt | Nimitz | Audrey O'Hanrahan | Michael Oversteegen | Clifton Palmarocchi | Martinos Polydorou | Eloise Pritchart | Nicolette Sambroth | Evelyn Sigbee | Aivars Terekhov | Thomas Theisman | Sheila Thiessen | Voitto Tuominen | Lester Tourville | Warren Trammell | Prescott Tremaine | Alice Truman | Margaret Truman | Jeffrey Tullingham | Yael Underwood | Bernardus Van Dort | Jacomina van Heutz | Aubrey Wanderman | Bruce Wijenberg | Judah Yanakov | Tina Yeager | Gerald Younger | Joseph Zachariah | Anton Zilwicki | Helen Zilwicki Starships * [[HMS Alistair McKeon|HMS Alistair McKeon]] * [[HMS Artemis|HMS Artemis]] * [[HMS Bollard|HMS Bollard]] * [[HMS Goblin|HMS Goblin]] * [[HMS Hercules|HMS Hercules]] * [[HMS Hexapuma|HMS Hexapuma]] * [[HMS Hippogriff|HMS Hippogriff]] * [[HMS Inconceivable|HMS Inconceivable]] * [[HMS Quentin Saint-James|HMS Quentin Saint-James]] * [[HMS Pegasus|HMS Pegasus]] * [[HMS Reprise|HMS Reprise]] * [[HMS Star Witch|HMS Star Witch]] * [[HMS Troll|HMS Troll]] * [[HMAMC Wayfarer|HMS Wayfarer]] * [[MANS Genesis|MANS Genesis]] * [[SLNS Alfred Wegener|SLNS Alfred Wegener]] * [[SLNS al-Kawarizmi|SLNS al-Kawarizmi]] * [[SLNS Andreas Vesalius|SLNS Andreas Vesalius]] * [[SLNS Anton von Leeuwenhoek|SLNS Anton von Leeuwenhoek]] * [[SLNS Archimedes|SLNS Archimedes]] * [[SLNS Avicenna|SLNS Avicenna]] * [[SLNS Gregor Mendel|SLNS Gregor Mendel]] * [[SLNS Hipparchus|SLNS Hipparchus]] * [[SLNS Joseph Buckley (superdreadnought)|SLNS Joseph Buckley]] * [[SLNS Joseph Hutton|SLNS Joseph Hutton]] * [[SLNS Joseph Lister|SLNS Joseph Lister]] * [[SLNS Leonardo da Vinci|SLNS Leonardo da Vinci]] * [[SLNS Marie Curie|SLNS Marie Curie]] * [[SLNS Max Planck|SLNS Max Planck]] * [[SLNS Wilhelm Roëntgen|SLNS Wilhelm Roëntgen]] * Dahak * Foxglove Stations * Blackbird Yard * [[HMSS Hephaestus|HMSS Hephaestus]] * [[HMSS Vulcan|HMSS Vulcan]] * [[HMSS Weyland|HMSS Weyland]] * Darius Prime Planets Dresden | Earth | Flax | Gamma | Grayson | Gryphon | Haven | Manticore | Mesa | Sphinx Nations *Protectorate of Grayson *Republic of Haven *Solarian League *Star Empire of Manticore ** Star Kingdom of Manticore ** Talbott Quadrant *Kingdom of Torch Other Act of Annexation | Audubon Ballroom | Battle Fleet | Black Rock Clan | Clarke's Peerage | Coup de vitesse | Darius System | Garronne River | Gamma Center | Green Pines | Harrington Clan | Harrington Steading | High Ridge government | Imperial Governor General for the Talbott Quadrant | Case Lacoön | Earldom of Maiden Hill | Limoges Mountains | Mendel | Mesan Alignment | Monica System | Neue-Stil Handgemenge | New Tuscany System | Nouveau Paris | Office of Frontier Security | Office of Naval Intelligence (RMN) | Office of Strategy and Planning | Operation Oyster Bay | Péricard Tower | Permanent Senior Undersecretary | Renaissance Factor | Republic of Haven Navy | Rhône River | Rochambeau | Royal Manticoran Marine Corps | Royal Manticoran Navy | ''Scientist''-class | Barony of Selleck | Silesia Station | spider drive | Spindle System | Battle of Spindle | streak drive | Talbott Cluster | Talbott Station | Tester | ''Vega''-class | Veyret Ocean | Western Hemisphere (Earth) | Yawata Crossing External links * ''Mission of Honor'' on Wikipedia * David Weber's Authorial Note at the beginning of the Storm from the Shadows preview Category:Honorverse material